Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Among Motorola Mobility Holdings
Inc.’s more than 17,000 patents, a group of 18 may prove most
useful in Google Inc.’s effort to fend off litigation targeting
the Android mobile platform.

The inventions date back to 1994 and form the heart of
three Motorola lawsuits against Apple Inc., making them among
the stars of the portfolio, said David Mixon, a patent lawyer at
Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Huntsville, Alabama. They cover
technology essential to the mobile-device industry, including
location services, antenna designs, e-mail transmission, touch-screen motions, software-application management and third-generation wireless.

“Any patent owner, before they consider litigation, is
going to carefully evaluate their patents to withstand an
attack,” Mixon said in a telephone interview. “You don’t want
to hold any back. You want to pick your strongest patents.”

Google is counting on its $12.5 billion acquisition of
Libertyville, Illinois-based Motorola Mobility to strengthen its
patent lineup as Apple and Microsoft Corp. challenge Android,
the best-selling smartphone operating system in the second
quarter. Google had been issued fewer than 1,000 patents as of
the start of this year. Motorola Mobility would add another
17,000, as well as about 7,500 pending applications.

Android was introduced on handsets three years ago to
further Google’s advertising business and is provided free to
device makers including Motorola Mobility, Samsung Electronics
Co. and HTC Corp. The platform accounted for 43.3 percent of the
smartphone market last quarter, according to Stamford,
Connecticut-based research firm Gartner Inc. Cupertino,
California-based Apple had an 18.2 percent share.

The U.S. International Trade Commission, which arbitrates
patent-related disputes, has fielded more than a dozen cases in
the past year related to smartphones and tablets. Because Google
doesn’t profit directly from Android, it has been able to sit
mostly on the sidelines while its partners were sued.

Google has been sued twice by competitors over Android --
Oracle Corp. and Skyhook Wireless Inc. -- and has never led a
patent-infringement case against another company. It declined to
comment for this story, as did Motorola Mobility and Apple.

An ITC judge last month found HTC’s Android phones
infringed two Apple patents, which may spur a U.S. import ban.

“We’ve been saying for some time that we intend to protect
the Android ecosystem,” David Drummond, chief legal officer at
Mountain View, California-based Google, said during a conference
call with analysts last week. “It’s under threat.”

The balance of power is shifting toward Google with this
acquisition of Motorola Mobility, so the option for settlements
and cross-licensing will become “inevitable,” said Ron
Epstein, CEO of Epicenter IP Group LLC, a Redwood City,
California-based patent brokerage.

One patent from 2001 disables a “touch sensitive” sensor
when a smartphone is near a user’s head to prevent inadvertent
hang-ups or dialing. Another from 1994 aims to increase data
storage, while a third enables users to control when a global
positioning system sends their location data over a network.

In a patent-infringement case that started yesterday at the
International Trade Commission, Microsoft accused Motorola
Mobility of infringing seven of its patents and requested a halt
to imports of certain Motorola phones. The trial is the first
smartphone dispute to be heard since Google announced it would
buy Motorola Mobility.

In addition to the Apple fight, Motorola Mobility has
claimed Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft infringes some of
its patents over video technology and is seeking to block
imports of the Xbox video-game console.

Apple filed its own patent-infringement complaints against
Motorola in October at the ITC and in federal court in Madison,
Wisconsin. Apple also filed a civil suit in March accusing
Motorola Mobility of “a pattern of unfair, deceptive and
anticompetitive conduct” and said the company demanded higher
licensing rates than for other competitors over three years of
talks. Microsoft has made the same allegations over Motorola’s
licensing demands, which Motorola has denied in both cases.

Syngenta Sues Bunge for Refusal to Accept Modified Corn

Syngenta AG, the world’s largest maker of agricultural
chemicals, sued a unit of Bunge Ltd. over claims that it’s
illegally refusing to accept corn produced from the company’s
bioengineered seeds.

Bunge, which operates a network of grain elevators and
receiving stations, posted a notice on its website and at
several locations that it is “unable to accept” delivery of
corn or soybeans produced by Syngenta’s Agrisure Viptera seeds
and another product made by DuPont Co., according to the
complaint.

Bunge said in the notice that the seed products haven’t
received international approval from major export destinations,
according to the complaint filed in federal court in Sioux City,
Iowa.

The product complies with all U.S. regulatory requirements,
Syngenta said yesterday in a statement.

Syngenta’s Viptera seed is intended to be an alternative to
Monsanto Co.’s corn seeds. The two companies have a lengthy past
history of litigation over patents for soybean seeds that
finally settled in 2008.

“When a product has been legally approved, growers should
be able to use that technology without subsequently being
subjected to arbitrary actions,” David Morgan, president of
Syngenta Seeds Inc., said yesterday in the statement.

Viptera, which received U.S. regulatory approval last year,
is genetically modified to combat damaging insects such as corn
earworm and fall armyworm. The technology has been approved for
cultivation in Canada, Argentina and Brazil, and for import in
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the
Philippines, Korea and Taiwan, Syngenta said in its statement.
Approval is pending in China and is expected early 2012, the
company said.

The case is Syngenta Seeds Inc. v. Bunge North America
Inc., U.S. District Court for Iowa, Northern District of Iowa,
Western Division (Sioux City).

Osram Files Patent Infringement Complaint Against LG Innotek

Siemens AG’s Osram and Osram Opto Semiconductors filed a
complaint against LG Innotek Co. Ltd. with the Korea Trade
Commission, the company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

Osram also filed nullity suits and infringement actions
against patents and companies of LG Group and Samsung
Electronics Co. in Korea, the company added.

This follows LG’s patent complaint filed last month at the
U.S. International Trade Commission against Osram. That dispute
is over technology used in LED displays for TV sets and monitors
that require less energy than traditional lighting.

The ITC in Washington is a quasi-judicial agency that
arbitrates trade disputes, and has the power to block products
that infringe U.S. patents. It typically completes its
investigations in 15 to 18 months.

For more patent news, click here.

Trademark

Amazon Files Application to Register ‘Lab 126’ as Trademark

Amazon.com Inc., seller of the Kindle electronic book
device, has applied to register “Lab126” as a trademark,
according to the database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.

According to the application, filed Aug. 16, the Seattle-based company plans to use the mark for “design and development
of computer hardware and software.”

Amazon plans to release a tablet device powered by the
Android system in October.

For more trademark news, click here.

Copyright

Rapidshare Gets Second Round of Fines in Downloading Case

A Swiss company that enables unauthorized downloading of
six publishers’ copyright-protected titles was hit with an
additional 160,000 euros ($230,000) in fines for failing to
comply with an earlier court order, according to a statement
from the publishers.

Rapidshare AG of Cham, Switzerland, was ordered in May 2010
to quit making available to the public 149 works from the six
publishers. The publishing houses are Bedford, Freeman and Worth
Publishing Group LLC, a subsidiary of Macmillan; Cengage
Learning Inc.; Elsevier Inc; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; The
McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.; and Pearson Education Inc.,
according to the statement.

At the time of the May court action, Rapidshare was fined
150,000 euros for its past actions.

The Regional Court of Hamburg, in a July 25 decision, said
Rapidshare continued to violate its orders, and that 100 of the
disputed works were still available between July 16 and July 18.
The company didn’t use a word filter that would have prevented
the unauthorized uploading, according to the publishers’
statement.

In December 2010 the company hired Washington-based Dutko
Worldwide to call on members of Congress and argue it shouldn’t
be the target of U.S. infringement actions, according to
Deutsche Welle.

For more copyright news, click here.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

IP Moves

IMC Licensing Adds Former Thinkfire Trademark Group

IMC Licensing, an intellectual property licensing agency,
acquired Thinkfire Trademark Licensing and brought three former
Thinkfire officials onboard, the Louisville, Kentucky-based
company said in a statement.

Joining IMC are Carla E. Dearing, Drew Kastner and Boris
Peres.

Kastner has done IP work for Comcast Corp.’s NBC Universal
unit, Cablevision Systems Corp., and for the IP holding unit
related to the late baseball star Mickey Mantle. He and his
partner Boris Peres spun the trademark licensing services out
from Warren, New Jersey-based Thinkfire Services USA.

Kastner has an undergraduate degree from Boston College and
a law degree from Rutgers University.

Peres was the founder and chief operating officer of Velox
Semiconductor, a spinoff from Emcore Corp. before he joined
Thinkfire. He has also served as an engagement manager at
McKinsey & Co., where he worked with clients in the Internet,
pharmaceutical and technology industries.

He has a doctorate in electric engineering from Cornell
University.

Dearing has previously worked in product and market
development for Morgan Stanley & Co.’s Morgan Stanley Capital
International unit, and before that was a founder of a financial
service advisory and fund administration firm that was
ultimately acquired by State Street Bank.

She has also serves as the assistant vice president,
strategic initiatives, for the University of Louisville’s Office
of Health Affairs.

She has an undergraduate degree in economics and political
science from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in
business administration from the University of Chicago.